App for the Institute
Nov. 14th, 2012 12:12 amPLAYER INFORMATION
PLAYER: Jess
ARE YOU AT LEAST 14 YEARS OLD?: Yes!
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE:
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
bakerhound AIM: trueorangewolf
PERSONAL JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hoarder
CHARACTERS PLAYED: None
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Alexander Whit
CANON: Original Character
AGE: 18
GENDER: Male
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: High School Grade 11
APPEARANCE: Alex is pretty average in his usual appearance, all things considered. He's about 1.8m (5 Feet, 9-10 inches) when he's a human. He has sandy brown hair with light brown hi-lights and his eyes are usually a greenish-brown.
That is. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes they're golden yellow, and sometimes, Alex? He's a real party mammal. What kind of mammal depends on- well, he's still working on the algorithm for that, but he's noticed a tendency to stick to the manageable sized. So far he's been a ram, a pine marten, a wolf, a fox, a house cat, a rather embarrassing incident of being a mouse and that one time he turned into a bear in his Mother's living room (that went over well). The one constant is that these mammals are always white with golden yellow eyes.
PERSONALITY:
Back before Alexander knew he was a mutant, he had always been a bit of an odd kid. Something of a lone wolf. It wasn't that he didn't like to spend time with the other kids, it was just this nagging sense that all children have. That he didn't quite fit in. For Alex, it was worse than usual. His family moved a lot, and he was always that weird new kid with the funny accent. After a while, Alex decided he was not going to mind being the odd one out. He could notice and learn things no one else seemed to pick up on. He was quick to pick up on Math and after that he dove into computers and technology like a sea lion to the cool autumn ocean. Sure, he tended to be the loner of his classes. He spent more of his time with his eyes on his laptop then on girls or sports, and eventually even school. But he wasn't miserable. He just also wasn't trying to be a part of it. Because not trying at all was better than constantly failing.
Alex is a surprisingly easy going kid. He has very little temper, in fact, angry on him mostly looks like a grumbling, irritable teenager. When it doesn't look like a ten foot snarling bear, at least. He had never been an angry kid, and he still wasn't now. He was the level-headed sort who could watch a situation unfold with remarkable calmness and decide how to handle it from there. Easy-going and mostly lighthearted outwardly, it's hard to see why Alex wouldn't get along with just about anyone. The truth of the matter, is, he does get along with most people very easily. But he keeps everyone at a distance. His smiles are just a polite front, more often than not, and while he might not have any qualms with a person personally, he never pursues anything deeper than a passing conversation or study session. He just doesn't see the point in forming a connection that he's going to have to break in a few months.
Alex was not the shy kid in the back of the class. That was part of his problem. He had all the attributes of an outcast and little of the mindset. He never hesitated to answer a question if the teacher asked it. He had no qualms about responding to the hecklers among his schoolmates with his own almost-witty retorts. It got him into a number of fights. Unfortunately, Alex never quite figured out that you had to either be quick enough to run, or strong enough to defend yourself. And when a pack of hot-headed bullies descends upon one person, it usually doesn't end well for the lone wolf.
Alex got his own back on those kids, sooner or later. He put his quickly learned skills with computers to fast and efficient use. Whether it was hacking into their computers to delete their homework, or e-mailing their porn folders and passwords to their parents, he always got a good kick out of extracting his revenge. In his personal opinion, he never started those fights, but boy did he know how to finish them.
Amazingly, few of his classmates or teachers ever caught on. No one quite believed Alex could be capable of those things, which was for the best, really. He was a terrible liar. He could do spectacular things with a few pieces of code, but when it came to words, the great hacker crashed and burned. Coding, numbers, algorithms, those made sense. But words always left him struggling.
Alex spent most of his life moving around, and he's got the mental scars to go with it. He treats every new place as a temporary rest stop, and rarely attempts to build a connection. What's the point of putting down roots if you're just going to be pulling them back out in a year? New place, new faces, same story. That's the way it always has been, and it's the way he assumes it always will be. He doesn't let people in, and even though he's happy to offer a friendly smile or a hand with someone's homework, he never tries to settle in. Never puts an effort into making friends. It's not worth it if he just has to say goodbye again.
A lifetime of change, and there's bound to be as much unsettled in Alex as there was outside of him. This never became more evident then when his powers decided to manifest themselves. As much as Alex could never settle into his life, each time they moved. His powers never settled either. And terrified of what his parents, the only constants in his life, would think, Alex kept his powers hidden for a long time. The secrecy and the avoidance it took to do this formed a rift between Alex and his parents, and when his unpredictable powers finally got the best of him, his parents flipped out and called the cops, animal control and the national guard. Alex fled, and the association of distrust and secrecy he had developed toward his powers left him fleeing from more than just his family. He tried to reason that his powers were just hallucinations until the day his parents saw him shift. After that there was no denying the truth anymore. Without an explanation, Alex's mind went wild with possibilities until he was left running away from that, as well.
On a deeper level, Alex spends a lot of his life uncertain, nervous, and on edge. He's never sure when the next ground-shaking change will be, and sitting on the edge of his chair waiting for it leaves him stressed out about it constantly. His outward calm is not a complete farce, but it is masking a lot of uncertainty. Alex doesn't have faith in himself, in anything beyond code and numbers. Algorithms can be proven, tested, measured. Humans can not. Situations are unpredictable unless you have all the variables, and Alex never does. He believes he will always be the odd one out. Never really a part of anything, just an extra piece of code without a purpose. He's been searching for that purpose all his life, but it never occurred to him that his freakish curse could be a part of that purpose.
And he never stopped to consider that being a part of something, rather than apart from everything, might be exactly what he needs.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Alex's power is as simple as it is remarkable. He is a shifter. His DNA is unstable and there is a startling range of 8% of his genes that are capable of fluctuating. This 8% allows him to shift within the mammalia class. His DNA can alter to allow him to take the form of any order of mammal. Consistently, whatever mammal he takes the form of will be white, but not albino. Alex has no idea his ability is limited to mammals, but he knows they are the only animals he has turned into so far.
He has very little control over his powers right now. His shifting is so far unpredictable, though he is working on an algorithm for that. Currently, natural instincts choose a form that is general best suited to the balance of emotions and chemicals in his system, but that is something Alex has not yet figured out.
So far he's been a ram, a pine marten, a wolf, a fox, a house cat, a mouse and a bear. All other forms he's taken so far happened while he was asleep and dreaming (sloth, dog, ferret, hare, boar) without his knowledge.
AU HISTORY:
Alexander Whit was born to Jason and Maria Whit, a young military couple with good hearts, if a bit distant in their parenting skill set. From the time he was three, Alex moved with his family to a new base every year or two. Those three years were the longest extent they had ever lived in one place. After that it was one-two years and on to the next base.
Now, for the first 8 years of his life, Alex only vaguely noticed that this was much different than most kids' lives. It was not until fourth and fifth grade, when the other kids were truly old enough to get mean, that he began to learn how very different he was. Name-calling and casting out happened in both years within a month of his living their, and for the first time in his life, Alex began to realize he was different from other kids.
With his parents too busy with their lives to take much notice of how the constant moves were affecting their son, Alex kept to himself, both at home and at school. The first day of middle school, Alex garnered up the nerve to ask his dad what he should do. Jason sat his son down and gave him the words that Alex would hold on to for the next 6 years.
"Sometimes life is gonna seem real unfair, son. When that happens, you got to hold your head up high, smile bright and shove forward as hard as you can. Because there ain't no way to fight dirty with life, and she ain't gonna change her ways just for you."
Now, Alex didn't really understand what those words meant at the time, but he took them for what he did understand. So Alex went to school every day that year with a bright smile on his face, and dove himself into schoolwork. Because while people changed every time they moved, school was a constant, and knowledge seemed to be the only thing that followed him when he left. He didn't bother trying to make friends, and in a way it was easier that way. No wasted time or effort, and no painful goodbyes at the end of the road. It was a system that worked. Alex wasn't really happy with it, but he figured he was happier than he would have been otherwise.
He was 13 when his powers manifested for the first time. He was at school number 5 at the time. A couple of hot-shot popular pricks had decided to put the new kid in his place and had ambushed him in the boy's bathroom. They were on their way to dunking him into the toilet when he disappeared from their grasps and dropped into the toilet bowl, a tiny white mouse. Now, the two bullies ran screaming to the principals office, and when the principal returned with them in tow, they found a soaked Alex with his foot stuck in the basin and his clothing plastered to his skin. All three boys were sentenced to a week's detention and the two boys chided for their outlandish stories.
Alex wasn't sure what to think of the event, and when he tried to tell his parents, his father was furious with him for lying. So Alex got his computer taken away as well.
The computer was the first thing since math that had made since for Alex. He had picked up on some basic coding over the internet and toyed with making different codes of his own, algorithms and even programs. He was fascinated and enamored by the order in a computer. How thousands of little lines of code were behind the simple to the complex of every function. When that was taken away from him, Alex resolved to never mention his little problem again.
The next time he shifted, Alex hid under his bed for an hour until it wore off. The third time, he had to explain to his parents about the dog he had 'brought home' and left in their backyard all school day, and why he had skipped school. And no, young man, you are not getting a dog.
It continued this way for two more years. Then, one terrible evening when his hormones were out of whack and his emotion wrecked (just two days before his 15th birthday) he got in a fight with his mother over why he always had 'that damned laptop' with him. In an instant, two years of gut-wrenching, nerve-wracking secrecy crashed and burned around him when, in his fit of hormonal rage, Alex shifted into a ten foot bear, right in front of his mother. The laptop fell to the ground and shattered part of the casing and screen, and Alex- well...
It isn't easy trying to calm your mother down when you're a ten foot bear waving giant claws around, bumping your head on the ceiling fan.
His mother called the police, animal control and the national guard before calling Alex's dad, and, frightened, angry and lost, Alex did the only thing he could think of.
He ran.
Smashed his way out the windows of their new house (House number 9) and disappeared into the night, never to see or speak to either of his parents again.
It isn't easy to be 15 and on the run, especially when you have no identity. Alex spent a month living rough before he decided to put his less unnatural talent to use. He hopped around library computers with a stolen flash drive and delved into the underground world of hacking. Eventually he managed to steal a card for long enough to order himself a laptop, then it was off on a never ending road trip while he used wi-fi hotspot after wi-fi hotspot to make his living on viruses and code-breaking. He did quite well for himself too, until the day he got caught red-handed.
It was only by luck that his holding cell had windows, and his powers decided to be useful rather than damaging for once. He shifted into a pine marten and slipped away. But it was less than a day later that the X-Men found him and, though he saw this as just another temporary stepping stone in his life, Alex agreed to go with them, rather than facing a trip to juvie, or worse.
SAMPLE
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:
http://institutesamples.dreamwidth.org/940.html?thread=461996#cmt461996
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE:
http://institutesamples.dreamwidth.org/940.html?thread=461740#cmt461740
PLAYER: Jess
ARE YOU AT LEAST 14 YEARS OLD?: Yes!
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE:
CONTACT:
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
hoarderCHARACTERS PLAYED: None
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Alexander Whit
CANON: Original Character
AGE: 18
GENDER: Male
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: High School Grade 11
APPEARANCE: Alex is pretty average in his usual appearance, all things considered. He's about 1.8m (5 Feet, 9-10 inches) when he's a human. He has sandy brown hair with light brown hi-lights and his eyes are usually a greenish-brown.
That is. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes they're golden yellow, and sometimes, Alex? He's a real party mammal. What kind of mammal depends on- well, he's still working on the algorithm for that, but he's noticed a tendency to stick to the manageable sized. So far he's been a ram, a pine marten, a wolf, a fox, a house cat, a rather embarrassing incident of being a mouse and that one time he turned into a bear in his Mother's living room (that went over well). The one constant is that these mammals are always white with golden yellow eyes.
PERSONALITY:
Back before Alexander knew he was a mutant, he had always been a bit of an odd kid. Something of a lone wolf. It wasn't that he didn't like to spend time with the other kids, it was just this nagging sense that all children have. That he didn't quite fit in. For Alex, it was worse than usual. His family moved a lot, and he was always that weird new kid with the funny accent. After a while, Alex decided he was not going to mind being the odd one out. He could notice and learn things no one else seemed to pick up on. He was quick to pick up on Math and after that he dove into computers and technology like a sea lion to the cool autumn ocean. Sure, he tended to be the loner of his classes. He spent more of his time with his eyes on his laptop then on girls or sports, and eventually even school. But he wasn't miserable. He just also wasn't trying to be a part of it. Because not trying at all was better than constantly failing.
Alex is a surprisingly easy going kid. He has very little temper, in fact, angry on him mostly looks like a grumbling, irritable teenager. When it doesn't look like a ten foot snarling bear, at least. He had never been an angry kid, and he still wasn't now. He was the level-headed sort who could watch a situation unfold with remarkable calmness and decide how to handle it from there. Easy-going and mostly lighthearted outwardly, it's hard to see why Alex wouldn't get along with just about anyone. The truth of the matter, is, he does get along with most people very easily. But he keeps everyone at a distance. His smiles are just a polite front, more often than not, and while he might not have any qualms with a person personally, he never pursues anything deeper than a passing conversation or study session. He just doesn't see the point in forming a connection that he's going to have to break in a few months.
Alex was not the shy kid in the back of the class. That was part of his problem. He had all the attributes of an outcast and little of the mindset. He never hesitated to answer a question if the teacher asked it. He had no qualms about responding to the hecklers among his schoolmates with his own almost-witty retorts. It got him into a number of fights. Unfortunately, Alex never quite figured out that you had to either be quick enough to run, or strong enough to defend yourself. And when a pack of hot-headed bullies descends upon one person, it usually doesn't end well for the lone wolf.
Alex got his own back on those kids, sooner or later. He put his quickly learned skills with computers to fast and efficient use. Whether it was hacking into their computers to delete their homework, or e-mailing their porn folders and passwords to their parents, he always got a good kick out of extracting his revenge. In his personal opinion, he never started those fights, but boy did he know how to finish them.
Amazingly, few of his classmates or teachers ever caught on. No one quite believed Alex could be capable of those things, which was for the best, really. He was a terrible liar. He could do spectacular things with a few pieces of code, but when it came to words, the great hacker crashed and burned. Coding, numbers, algorithms, those made sense. But words always left him struggling.
Alex spent most of his life moving around, and he's got the mental scars to go with it. He treats every new place as a temporary rest stop, and rarely attempts to build a connection. What's the point of putting down roots if you're just going to be pulling them back out in a year? New place, new faces, same story. That's the way it always has been, and it's the way he assumes it always will be. He doesn't let people in, and even though he's happy to offer a friendly smile or a hand with someone's homework, he never tries to settle in. Never puts an effort into making friends. It's not worth it if he just has to say goodbye again.
A lifetime of change, and there's bound to be as much unsettled in Alex as there was outside of him. This never became more evident then when his powers decided to manifest themselves. As much as Alex could never settle into his life, each time they moved. His powers never settled either. And terrified of what his parents, the only constants in his life, would think, Alex kept his powers hidden for a long time. The secrecy and the avoidance it took to do this formed a rift between Alex and his parents, and when his unpredictable powers finally got the best of him, his parents flipped out and called the cops, animal control and the national guard. Alex fled, and the association of distrust and secrecy he had developed toward his powers left him fleeing from more than just his family. He tried to reason that his powers were just hallucinations until the day his parents saw him shift. After that there was no denying the truth anymore. Without an explanation, Alex's mind went wild with possibilities until he was left running away from that, as well.
On a deeper level, Alex spends a lot of his life uncertain, nervous, and on edge. He's never sure when the next ground-shaking change will be, and sitting on the edge of his chair waiting for it leaves him stressed out about it constantly. His outward calm is not a complete farce, but it is masking a lot of uncertainty. Alex doesn't have faith in himself, in anything beyond code and numbers. Algorithms can be proven, tested, measured. Humans can not. Situations are unpredictable unless you have all the variables, and Alex never does. He believes he will always be the odd one out. Never really a part of anything, just an extra piece of code without a purpose. He's been searching for that purpose all his life, but it never occurred to him that his freakish curse could be a part of that purpose.
And he never stopped to consider that being a part of something, rather than apart from everything, might be exactly what he needs.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Alex's power is as simple as it is remarkable. He is a shifter. His DNA is unstable and there is a startling range of 8% of his genes that are capable of fluctuating. This 8% allows him to shift within the mammalia class. His DNA can alter to allow him to take the form of any order of mammal. Consistently, whatever mammal he takes the form of will be white, but not albino. Alex has no idea his ability is limited to mammals, but he knows they are the only animals he has turned into so far.
He has very little control over his powers right now. His shifting is so far unpredictable, though he is working on an algorithm for that. Currently, natural instincts choose a form that is general best suited to the balance of emotions and chemicals in his system, but that is something Alex has not yet figured out.
So far he's been a ram, a pine marten, a wolf, a fox, a house cat, a mouse and a bear. All other forms he's taken so far happened while he was asleep and dreaming (sloth, dog, ferret, hare, boar) without his knowledge.
AU HISTORY:
Alexander Whit was born to Jason and Maria Whit, a young military couple with good hearts, if a bit distant in their parenting skill set. From the time he was three, Alex moved with his family to a new base every year or two. Those three years were the longest extent they had ever lived in one place. After that it was one-two years and on to the next base.
Now, for the first 8 years of his life, Alex only vaguely noticed that this was much different than most kids' lives. It was not until fourth and fifth grade, when the other kids were truly old enough to get mean, that he began to learn how very different he was. Name-calling and casting out happened in both years within a month of his living their, and for the first time in his life, Alex began to realize he was different from other kids.
With his parents too busy with their lives to take much notice of how the constant moves were affecting their son, Alex kept to himself, both at home and at school. The first day of middle school, Alex garnered up the nerve to ask his dad what he should do. Jason sat his son down and gave him the words that Alex would hold on to for the next 6 years.
"Sometimes life is gonna seem real unfair, son. When that happens, you got to hold your head up high, smile bright and shove forward as hard as you can. Because there ain't no way to fight dirty with life, and she ain't gonna change her ways just for you."
Now, Alex didn't really understand what those words meant at the time, but he took them for what he did understand. So Alex went to school every day that year with a bright smile on his face, and dove himself into schoolwork. Because while people changed every time they moved, school was a constant, and knowledge seemed to be the only thing that followed him when he left. He didn't bother trying to make friends, and in a way it was easier that way. No wasted time or effort, and no painful goodbyes at the end of the road. It was a system that worked. Alex wasn't really happy with it, but he figured he was happier than he would have been otherwise.
He was 13 when his powers manifested for the first time. He was at school number 5 at the time. A couple of hot-shot popular pricks had decided to put the new kid in his place and had ambushed him in the boy's bathroom. They were on their way to dunking him into the toilet when he disappeared from their grasps and dropped into the toilet bowl, a tiny white mouse. Now, the two bullies ran screaming to the principals office, and when the principal returned with them in tow, they found a soaked Alex with his foot stuck in the basin and his clothing plastered to his skin. All three boys were sentenced to a week's detention and the two boys chided for their outlandish stories.
Alex wasn't sure what to think of the event, and when he tried to tell his parents, his father was furious with him for lying. So Alex got his computer taken away as well.
The computer was the first thing since math that had made since for Alex. He had picked up on some basic coding over the internet and toyed with making different codes of his own, algorithms and even programs. He was fascinated and enamored by the order in a computer. How thousands of little lines of code were behind the simple to the complex of every function. When that was taken away from him, Alex resolved to never mention his little problem again.
The next time he shifted, Alex hid under his bed for an hour until it wore off. The third time, he had to explain to his parents about the dog he had 'brought home' and left in their backyard all school day, and why he had skipped school. And no, young man, you are not getting a dog.
It continued this way for two more years. Then, one terrible evening when his hormones were out of whack and his emotion wrecked (just two days before his 15th birthday) he got in a fight with his mother over why he always had 'that damned laptop' with him. In an instant, two years of gut-wrenching, nerve-wracking secrecy crashed and burned around him when, in his fit of hormonal rage, Alex shifted into a ten foot bear, right in front of his mother. The laptop fell to the ground and shattered part of the casing and screen, and Alex- well...
It isn't easy trying to calm your mother down when you're a ten foot bear waving giant claws around, bumping your head on the ceiling fan.
His mother called the police, animal control and the national guard before calling Alex's dad, and, frightened, angry and lost, Alex did the only thing he could think of.
He ran.
Smashed his way out the windows of their new house (House number 9) and disappeared into the night, never to see or speak to either of his parents again.
It isn't easy to be 15 and on the run, especially when you have no identity. Alex spent a month living rough before he decided to put his less unnatural talent to use. He hopped around library computers with a stolen flash drive and delved into the underground world of hacking. Eventually he managed to steal a card for long enough to order himself a laptop, then it was off on a never ending road trip while he used wi-fi hotspot after wi-fi hotspot to make his living on viruses and code-breaking. He did quite well for himself too, until the day he got caught red-handed.
It was only by luck that his holding cell had windows, and his powers decided to be useful rather than damaging for once. He shifted into a pine marten and slipped away. But it was less than a day later that the X-Men found him and, though he saw this as just another temporary stepping stone in his life, Alex agreed to go with them, rather than facing a trip to juvie, or worse.
SAMPLE
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:
http://institutesamples.dreamwidth.org/940.html?thread=461996#cmt461996
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE:
http://institutesamples.dreamwidth.org/940.html?thread=461740#cmt461740
